


Conjoin

by Xparrot



Category: Last Exile
Genre: Bath Sex, M/M, Pre-Canon, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-24
Updated: 2005-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-02 11:14:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xparrot/pseuds/Xparrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thought he was prepared.  But of course no one is ever truly prepared for Dio.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conjoin

The palace bathing room is empty. If either of them called out, someone would appear in an instant, but now it's just they two among the steam, his hands and knees on the polished mosaic and Dio's gasps whispering echoes off the high domed ceiling.

Lucciola has seen the consequences before, of when the lords and ladies came of the age to experiment. He's sat in the healer's room, listening to the screams and sobs as the blood flows over the gleaming silver table. The first time is the worse, they say, unless the master becomes determined to exceed that. Sometimes the vocal chords are severed, if the screaming irritates. But those are the low servants of lesser lords; a mute could never adequately serve Lord Dio.

They have both grown tall of late, and their muscles have hardened as their baby fat melts. Other servants had been murmuring speculation behind their hands for months now, wagering when Dio's interest would peak. By this age, his sister had already taken three lovers, but Dio has shown little interest in anything but flying.

He thought he was prepared. But of course no one is ever truly prepared for Dio.

Climbing from the bath, he extended his hand to help Dio from the water. Sometimes Dio would ignore the offer to spring out in a cascade of hot water, but tonight he took it, his fingers threading through Lucciola's to clasp them tight. He did not let go as they stepped down to the tile, instead shot out his left hand lightning quick to close around Lucciola's own, and pulled down their arms to draw them close together, naked, chest to chest and nose to nose.

"Lucciola," Dio asked, and tilting his head he traced the set of Lucciola's lips with his tongue. "What do you know about sex?"

"What do you wish to know, Lord Dio?"

"It looks so odd. But some people have sex all the time, when they don't need to, not like they need to eat or sleep. So it must be fun. Don't you think so, Lucciola?"

"It seems likely."

Dio leaned closer, shining wet and flushed feverish pink from the heat of the water. His dripping hair caught in Lucciola's unblinking lashes as he turned his head to press their cheeks together. "Let's try, and find out," he said.

"As you want," Lucciola said.

"You haven't done it before, have you? But you've seen it, so you know how."

"Yes."

"Good." Dio stepped back, grinning, the air cool on Lucciola's naked skin where his lord's warmth had been. Dio's eyes were wide with the same glittering excitement as before a flight in a sky he had never flown before. "Then you do it, Lucciola."

"Lord Dio?"

"It doesn't look too hard, but you learn faster than me. So you do it." He crouched on his haunches, peered at Lucciola and prodded him with curious fingers. "It shouldn't be too hard. This, goes--here," and he rolled off his heels onto his back, long nude legs curled back with his arms locked under his knees, fingers pointing. "Yes, that's simple enough. Do it, Lucciola."

A servant who hesitates at any command is useless; if one will not obey then one must immediately refuse. But the most perfectly trained mind cannot always keep pace with Dio. Lucciola paused, counting two heartbeats in the space before he found the correct words. "Lord Dio, I may hurt you."

"Don't be silly, Lucciola." Dio frowned, lips curving slightly down. "You'd never hurt me." He thrust his neck forward to examine himself, then Lucciola. The frown deepened in contemplation until a single line creased the mark between his silver brows. "I see. Like trying to jam together mismatched joists in those delightful vanship things. Ah, but they have ways of getting them to fit!"

He threw back his legs, heels past his ears, to backflip to his feet, then dashed around to the alcove on the other side of the bath, wrenching open the silver filigree doors. Before Lucciola could intervene, Dio had already claimed a bottle of spice-scented oil. Prying out the glass stopper and tossing it aside to chime and fracture on the tile, he poured half the oil out over his hands.

Lucciola arrived in time to catch the flask slipping from his grasp before it too could shatter. Dio laughed, clapped his slicked palms together, then dropped to his knees. Like a child finger-painting, he spread the oil on Lucciola, smearing glistening gold over his rising member, his belly, his thighs, as Lucciola stood quietly still, holding the bottle. Excess oil dripped viscously, and Dio licked it from his fingers, from Lucciola, and grinned up at him. "It's sweet!" His nose and lips shone with it.

He ran his hands down Lucciola's smooth legs to rub off the oil, then chafed them fast together, so the friction burned away the last. Then setting his palms to the tile, he swung on his arms to tip his body back. "Now, Lucciola."

"Yes, Lord Dio." Lucciola knelt, poured more oil into his cupped hands and set the flask aside. He reached to apply the oil, but at the merest touch to his flesh, Dio released a sharp breath, and Lucciola stilled his hands. "Lord Dio, shall I--"

"Go quicker, come on. Yes, there, do that again," and Lucciola obediently ran his swift fingers a second time around the circle, feeling the minute tremor of the muscles as another gasp escaped Dio. He hooked his legs over Lucciola's shoulders, crossed his heels behind his neck to trap him and pull him closer, repeated, "Now, Lucciola."

With one hand Lucciola guided himself, pushing gently into that opening as Dio spread his legs wider. "Take my hips," Dio said, and Lucciola did, clasping his slender waist between both hands, thumbs fitting to the hollows above the curving bone. Dio's damp warm skin whitened under the pressure of his splayed fingers.

"Harder," Dio hissed, "further," but even with the silken slide of the oil the fit was tight, and Lucciola would not force it, thinking of the blood flowing from those injured bodies in the healers' houses.

"Lucciola," Dio said. Lucciola, who rarely heard anger in his lord's voice, recognized it in that command.

If Dio cried out loud enough for others to hear his pain, then Lucciola would be executed on the morrow. The Maestro will allow her brother to suffer no hurt but that inflicted by her own hand. But Dio would not cry out. Dio is too strong. Lucciola thrust forward his hips, just as Dio set his shoulders against the rim of the bath and pushed himself, and they locked together.

For a moment Lucciola can't breathe, though he can hear Dio's breaths, breaking like waves against his ears, against his whole body. Then Dio speaks, and he hears that too throughout himself, the command sounding through him as if he were a tolled bell, though he can't make sense of the words at that moment, and doesn't need to. He can feel Dio move against him, and moves himself in answer, rocking his hips back and forth.

For more than half his life, Dio has been his life. He knows every tone of Dio's voice, every touch of Dio's hands, every shade of blue sky that can reflect in Dio's eyes. But Lucciola has never known this close, tight heat that is Dio's heat, surrounding him. Not even when flying, not even when their lives depend on him knowing Dio's past and next move precisely, are they this matched, this perfectly enmeshed.

Dio shudders, but not in pain, shoving himself more firmly against the rounded rim of the bath as with legs and arms he pulls Lucciola closer, deeper. Braced hands and knees against the floor, Lucciola pushes back, meeting his strength without resisting it, burying and reburying himself inside his lord, slow and deep and hard. He does not need to ask for a command, and Dio needs not give one, because Lucciola knows completely and entirely what Dio wants. In this moment he feels that want and his own as the same ache, and every motion is Dio's desire, is his own.

Dio laughs when Lucciola comes, panting and breathless, a beautiful sound, and Dio's back arches in an echo of Lucciola's release, tilting up against him as Lucciola sinks down. Dio raises his head from the support of the polished ridge, blinks at Lucciola. "So," he asks, "do you think it's fun?"

Lucciola draws warm, steamy air into his mouth, down into his lungs. His muscles are trembling as if exhausted by battle, and the ceramic tile is achingly hard under his knees. "Do you, Lord Dio?"

"I asked first," Dio chides, flexing his legs, tightening them around Lucciola. "Tell me, do you like it?"

"I do, Lord Dio," Lucciola answers.

"Now me," Dio says, "you do that, too, with your hands. There, tighter."

Lucciola's hand is around Dio's erection and Dio's hands are around Lucciola's hand, guiding him along that length. Dio puts one finger to his neck, to just under where his collar would reach. "Put your lips there, Lucciola," he says. "Kiss hard," and Lucciola dips his head down to set his mouth to that point. His lips work in rhythm with the strokes of his hand, and Dio under him moves to that same accelerando pulse, the pace gradually building to completion.

"Faster," Dio is whispering, giddily, anxious, and Lucciola feels his impatience in the tension of his body; Dio, who is never still, paused rigid and waiting. "Now--_now_."

It's a climax for both of them, even if Lucciola is already spent, the warm spurt against his stomach and the faint high keen from Dio's throat, deafening as if Lucciola had screamed with his own voice, though he knows it's not loud enough to be heard outside the bath chamber.

Afterwards, Dio disentangles himself, skidding on his hands away from Lucciola to roll over and onto his feet. His graceful movement is a little slower than usual, stiff, like a cat too long crouched waiting in ambush.

Lucciola stands as well, permitting no sign of the leaden feeling in his limbs to show. Nor does he shiver, though his skin shows gooseflesh even in the bath room's warmth, oil and stickiness cooling on his legs and stomach. Dio is smeared with the same, and sweat is drying dark in his hair.

"We will need to bathe again," Lucciola states.

Dio touches his own neck, above the collarbone, to the small red bruise starting to show. Almost without thinking, Lucciola reaches for the mark, as if it could be brushed away as easily as a rose petal fallen on that pale skin.

But Dio catches his hand, laces their fingers together. Looping his other arm about Lucciola's shoulders, he lets himself sag against his chest, bonelessly limp as melting wax. Silken strands of silver hair tickle Lucciola's nose, while his lord's long fingers drift down his spine. "I liked it, too," Dio murmurs, "it's almost as good as flying."

He arches his back, twists from Lucciola's arms like he's escaping a wrestling hold. "We'll have to try it again sometime," he says, grinning, and then he dashes for the bath. But their hands are still linked, so Lucciola is towed along with him, and they fall into the warm water together.


End file.
